So this morning, you opened up that newsletter in your inbox. You know, the one you bought that thing from 6 months ago. You were reading the info there, looking at those photos, and suddenly–you found yourself on their webpage, dragging more items to your cart, checking out…and boom!

The idea came to you: Why isn’t your small business taking advantage of email marketing like these guys?!

Email marketing is a free and super-easy way to keep your company in front of your audience’s mind. Each week, every-other-week-however often feels right–your audience will find itself going about their days and boom! Your content appears, right there at the top of their inbox.

Email marketing is the perfect way to stay involved in your subscribers’ daily lives. To make the most of your audience’s inboxes, check out our top 5 tips for email campaign management!

1. Know Your Goals

As with any sort of digital marketing campaign, it won’t do you any good at all to facilitate an email marketing campaign without a clear set of goals from the start.

Are you hoping your efforts in email marketing will bring you more followers? Hoping it’ll further engage existing followers? Do you want your subscribers’ interest in your company and its services to be boosted or renewed? All of the above?

Whatever your goals may be, it’s endlessly important to work with these in the front of your mind as you draft your email marketing strategy. Ask yourself and your team why, exactly, you’ve chosen to run an email marketing campaign at all-then ask what it is that you hope to get out of it a few months or a year down the line.

Keep in mind the fact that, for most of us, any efforts in marketing are structured around goals for conversion. Starting with goals directly related to conversion from email marketing could be a great place to start when deciding on the direction of your email marketing campaign!

2. Know Your Audience

Once you’ve narrowed down whatever it is that your team hopes to gain from its email marketing campaign, it’s time to shift your perspective to the other side of things: Your audience.

If you’ve had a digital or social media marketing campaign for a while, you’ve probably learned a fair amount about your audience already-their interests, what bores them, the sort of content that really snags their attention.

Take full advantage of Google Analytics with any existing digital marketing and your website. Collect all available information about your audience, including demographics, interests, habits, and other super-useful info.

Once you’ve gathered all the data you can get your hands on, do some research. Decide what sorts of content you can craft in order to catch your audience’s attention through emails.

Consider your audience as deeply as possible when deciding on things like how often and at what time to send emails, what sort of writing style and voice to use in written content, and more.

The more information and better understanding you have of your audience, the better you’ll be able to tailor your company’s emails to suit their interests and make a genuine connection.

3. Know the Different Sorts of Emails

That’s right–when it comes to email marketing, there’s not really a single, standard “Hello, how are you? I am well,” email formatting. Instead, there are a few major sorts of emails you might choose to send–and it’s important to note how these differ so you can use them wisely.

First, you’ll have the common “promotional email,” which, simply, promotes your company’s content and services. These emails might highlight sales or new products.

Next, there’s the “relational email,” which includes things such as weekly newsletters, excerpts from blog content, and other information subscribers elected to receive. Finally, “transactional emails” usually deliver things like order summaries, signup confirmations, and user agreements.

Your email marketing campaign will largely consist of the first two types of emails-promotional and relational. These emails deliver new info and content that are most likely to lead to conversion. These emails allow your presence to make itself known in subscribers’ inboxes, and they leave behind interesting bait that might just lure subscribers to your page.

You can read more now on how to draft emails your subscribers will actually read.

4. Know Your Plan

Remember those goals we talked about? Remember how we discussed the necessity of deciding how you might best relate to subscribers? Well, now it’s time to put all that thinking and strategizing into play by making a careful content plan upon which to structure your email marketing campaign.

In planning your email marketing campaign, you should do your best to look at the coming 3 to 4 weeks. Look at your website’s content calendar and your business’s calendar to note things like publication dates of new content, relevant sales or specials, and any other upcoming information.

Once you’ve taken note of all significant company happenings, decide on your email marketing calendar for the coming weeks. It’s best to align this strategy directly with other company calendar happenings, noting things like specific dates and times emails are to go out.

Without a structured email marketing plan, many businesses find that they fail entirely to uphold their email marketing. Their efforts tend to fizzle out, and subscribers tend to forget about their services altogether. Planning ahead will help you stay on top of your email marketing game.

5. Know How to Draft Quality Content

Finally, the golden rule for any and all digital marketing: Put out only quality content.

Sure, you can bang out an email to a colleague or friend in 2 minutes flat-but what about those typos? Were you really clear? And did you even remember to include all the information you meant to?

Another reason planning ahead for your email marketing is so important is that it gives you time to ensure your content is thorough, clean, and high-quality.

If you’re hoping for your subscribers to take your email marketing campaign seriously, you can’t be sending out low-quality stuff. Everything you send in email marketing should be as high-quality as the content on your website-and as high-quality as you’d send to a high-level investor or partner.

Want More Tips on Email Campaign Management?

Email marketing can be a huge deal for your business’s overall marketing strategy. It allows you a smooth entrance into the daily lives of your subscribers-and therefore seriously boosts your conversion potential.

Taking your strategy up a notch can boost your business and reach the clients you’re looking for. For more tips on email campaign management and other awesome digital media thoughts, check out our page!